


Orestes Fallen and Pylades Drowned

by IHaveNeverBeenWise



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: First fic in the fandom, Gen, M/M, Sort of platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IHaveNeverBeenWise/pseuds/IHaveNeverBeenWise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternate ending in which three besides Marius survived the barricades - Prouvaire was injured but not killed, and Enjolras and Grantaire did not die in a blaze of glory, but were dragged, wounded, from the battle. Now, aged and world-weary, they reflect on what has been and what might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orestes Fallen and Pylades Drowned

A man sits by the fire and writes. His brow is furrowed in concentration and his eyes are fierce, the pen flying over yellowing pages. He pays no heed to the creeping shadows of dusk; all of his attention is focused on the manuscript before him. A speech, maybe. Or an article, a battle cry.   
At last, he puts down the pen and flexes his ink-stained fingers. Once, these hands, weathered and callused, splattered with ink and elegant in a way a scholar’s hands so often are, had held swords. He had clutched the wood of bayonets and rested his fingers on the silver triggers of revolvers. That had been another life, so far removed from his own that it felt like hardly more than a dream. He runs one hand through his hair, parting the graying curls with his fingers and letting the once-gold strands fall before his eyes with a sigh that speaks of deep melancholy.  
Once, he had been great. Once, he had stood on pedestals and spoken to young hearts and young minds with words of a better world, parched in a way that he had believed revolution could quench. He’d believed that he could be their savior, believed it with the childish hubris of an old soul, a boy far beyond his years and clinging to hope. That had been ripped from him long ago, of course. His body still bears the scars; battle leaves not even the strongest marble unscathed. He is not the same as the youth on the barricades, and has not been for many years. This is but the bitter husk of that boy, hollowed by too many long months idle, spent among pens and parchment rather than crowds and courage. He has grown old.  
In a fit of pique, he snatches the parchment, still wet with ink, from the table, glaring at it as if it is poison. Worthless words, useless words, cowardly and fearful. He tears it fiercely, gripping either end and pulling apart, ripping it in two and crushing the halves. It is no good, no good at all. He cannot both condone a revolution and condemn its effects. He cannot afford to waver in his position, to be affected by guilt and nightmares. And so he wrenches the paper, twisting and rending until it can no longer be read, anger coloring his movements. It is irrational and it leaves as quickly as it comes. He seems to crumple, pressing the wrought paper to his forehead, head resting in the heels of his palms. The ink of the parchment stains his skin, black smears marking pale flesh. He looks fierce like this, a warrior in his warpaint, ready for battle. Only his eyes show the lie – old and weary, battle-scarred and yet hungry for a fight. He clenches his eyes shut and throws the crumpled paper away from himself, letting it fall from his fingers into the fire by the grate. The flames lick at it hungrily, the parchment blackening and coiling as it is consumed, scraps of ash flying up on the smoke.  
He keeps his eyes closed a moment longer, and tries to control his ragged breathing. There is anger here, boiling beneath the surface. Decades of frustration always simmering, yearning for release. It is all he can do not to leap up and rend to room apart, give his hands the destruction that they crave. Oh, these hands, drenched in the blood of good men, which killed before and itch to kill again. It is frightening, the scarlet rage pulsing behind his eyelids, and he does not know what to make of it. Once, he would not have been this way. Once, there would have been a republic rather than a forgotten revolt in summers long past, stomped out before it could so much as rally a following. Once…but it does not do to dwell on the past. He slams an open fist on the desk, an outlet for all that he feels. The inkwell tips at the blow, ink sloshing from its rim and trickling onto the floor like black blood. A whimper is caught in his throat but he will not give it a voice. It is silent but for the dripping of ink and the muted crackling of flames, and the soft sounds of harsh exhales.  
And then, with a great force of will, he calms himself. His breaths grow measured and he relaxes his shoulders and straightens his back. His face goes slack, but his eyes are still shut. He stays like that for a short while, wiping the rage from his mind and the tenseness from his limbs, and if his breath hitches in his chest and his shoulders shake only once, then there is no one there to see it.  
Sometimes, the ghosts haunt him. Sometimes, he thinks he sees Combeferre in the streets or Courfeyrac in the cafes. He passes a man who could have been Bahorel and an artist who reminds him of Feuilly. Sometimes, he is envious. How glorious it must have been to die quickly, rather than be dragged from the barricade like a coward.  
Four of them had survived. Pontmercy, to his knowledge, had been rescued by his wife’s father, and he now was a father himself. Prouvaire, injured on the wrong side of the barricade, had been only wounded, although he could never forget the man’s cries as enemy bullets had torn his flesh. True melancholy, it seemed, did not suit the poet after all. He had fallen in on himself, retreated into his words. With a haunted look in his eyes and lines on his brow, he had grown apart from them. It was not begrudged of him – few could live with such memories, much less one who had loved so much and been so good. But Prouvaire eked out a living on his writing, published in one journal or another now and again. They had not stayed in touch; he’d left Paris as soon as his wounds had healed, and letters from him had grown fewer and fewer until they stopped coming completely.   
He himself had made it from the barricades alive; he’d been carried from the corpses, unconscious and riddled with bullets, presumably by the same man that had born Marius away. His escape had been weak, and the wounds that had taken him down still ached with the cold. He would have died that day, flag clutched in one hand and a bit of wood in the other. Often, he wishes he had.  
“Enjolras.”  
His eyes snap open, focusing on the man before him. The man kneels at his feet, one hand hovering above Enjolras’ knee. His dark hair, tinged silver at the temples, falls loosely about his sallow face. His lips are pale and his brow furrowed in worry, but his dark eyes are surprisingly sober. He pulls his hand to his chest and rocks back on his heels, threadbare clothes loose on his thin frame.  
“Enjolras, are you well? You are pale.” There is genuine care in his voice, and Enjolras nods absently at it, making as if to stand.  
“I will be fine, Grantaire,” he mutters. “I was in thought.”  
“I know. Do not think about what could have been – it will do you know good.” The advice is meant well. Grantaire too, has changed, though time has touched him least of all. His downward trajectory remained just that, although he has drunk less these past years. One of us has to be sane, he’d said with a bitter grin. At the time, Enjolras had felt little but contempt at the words. That is not to say he’d left the bottle altogether – he is only drunk less often, so that sometimes there is even light in his eyes. But when a bottle finds its way into his grasp, it is as potent as it eve could have been. The years had not been kind to Grantaire.  
The years had not been kind to any of them, it seemed.  
“You should rest.” Grantaire rises to his feet as Enjolras does, and Enjolras allows Grantaire’s hand to rest a moment on his shoulder before moving from beneath the gentle touch to close the books that lay open on the desk. Grantaire fetches a cloth with which to wipe away the spilled ink and looks mournfully at the charred bits of paper in the fireplace. He says nothing of it, but his expression is pained.  
“What has become of us?”  
The question startles Grantaire, and he looks up at Enjolras expectantly. It is rare enough that the man allows himself to think of the past these days, and the nostalgic melancholy in his words catch him by surprise. He might have said something caustic and witty if it were another time, but the hour is late and he has not the energy for cynicism.   
“I know not,” he says with a sigh and downcast eyes. “Only time will tell where will end up.”  
The silence stretches between them, the air between them thick with things unsaid and swollen with things that they are both thinking. It is Enjolras who breaks the moment with a bitter smile and murmured words. “We are out of our time now, far from where our time should have ended.”  
And when they sleep that night, Enjolras in one room and Grantaire in the other, they will dream of a time long ago, a time that ended on a warm June morning with blood and tears and battle. A time when they felt alive and even felt free.  
But that time has long since passed.


End file.
